


Deconstruction

by Sans



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, Eventual Romance, F/M, Psychological Drama, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-02-25 23:56:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18712309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sans/pseuds/Sans
Summary: They are fractured. They put the pieces of themselves back together as best they can, but who they are now no longer aligns with who they used to be. It is a slow, wrenching process, pulling off the past, deconstructing the present, to become people who can live an unrealized future.





	1. The Thinker

**Author's Note:**

> This is post-season 9, starting after baby Eli was born. From there, it's pure imagination.

They don’t talk about what happened.

They don’t talk about it, but it is a broken loop in his head. Fin coming up in the car, saying something has happened; the struggle to keep himself from vomiting during the helicopter ride; blindly moving past Olivia to Kathy, to his child, his boy and the extreme, almost sick relief of seeing them, alive, moving; grabbing Olivia and holding her like he’s never done, her hands on his back, her hair in his face.

He has talked about the accident. He has talked to Kathy, he has talked to his priest, he has talked to Cragen. He even asked to speak to Huang, but he couldn’t bring himself to dial the number. Calling Huang would mean that he would be ready to talk about something beyond the accident, beyond that fear, beyond what he knows to be true.

He knows that when he took her hand and twirled, like it was some dance, he forgot where his hands were supposed to go. He knows that when he heard her breathing shudder once, twice, he trespassed into an area he won’t be able to find his way out of. He knows that when she sagged, a part of him went into her and left him half of what he was thirty seconds before.

He knows that when he thought he was about to drown and had to pull back, he recognized the same sensation in her brown eyes, except she wasn’t terrified. She drowned long ago.

Three weeks later they still laugh and have awkward conversations, argue about cases, not know where to put their hands if they accidentally touch each other. She still doesn’t drink coffee, no matter how many times he might fill her mug with it. He still can’t let some things lie. They nudge each other when they haven’t spoken in too long, just to get a sound out of each other, or a grin.

It’s nauseatingly simple to slip back into old habits, to become what was and ignore what you actually are.

He was once made up of facts, concrete and sure, indisputable. He is a good cop. He is a good Catholic. He has a beautiful family. He loves his wife. He respects, admires, and trusts his partner. But now, sitting on a park bench in Central Park letting the cold attack the parts of him that he can still feel, he isn’t sure of himself. He is a good cop, but he has how many warnings in his jacket? He is a good Catholic, but when was the last time he prayed and believed it? He has a beautiful family, but in the past few years he’s been so caught up in his own shit he doesn’t know his own kids. He loves his wife, but she left him, he signed the papers, and now they have a child because he couldn’t be alone. He respects, admires, and trusts his partner, but he sometimes imagines what would have happened if he reached for her directly instead of doing it as an afterthought.

He leans forward on his elbows, putting his face in his hands. He initially went out for a sub and some coffee and ended up in the Park, his thoughts carrying him to a bench for further contemplation.

He isn’t a thinking man. When it is called for, he might need dark, quiet space and a bottle of malt whiskey to do the thinking properly. He has never had this urge to be in such a public place and lose himself in thoughts, to open himself to all sorts of possibilities.

A puff of icy wind travels across his face and he scrubs his hands over his face, his palms scratching on his stubble. He forgot to shave this morning. He also forgot his gloves and his head felt like a block of ice so he stole a black skullcap from Dickie and borrowed a pair of fingerless gloves from the desk sergeant at the precinct. He’s been forgetful lately, not of other people, but of himself. It’s like he lost something between when he ran to the squad car and when he stepped away from her.

He stands up and shoves his hands in his pockets. His back and left ankle ache from the cold and it’s a welcomed ache, it replaces another ache, one that he’s beginning to accept and not find a cure for--his ache to be what he’s always been.

* * *

Elliot doesn’t know how it happened. One minute they’re talking about Eli and the next he’s standing over the sink, gripping the counter. They are fighting about his job, again. The same tired argument Kathy has drawn out and thrown over the night, causing him to seek refuge in the bathroom. He hears her footsteps outside the door and counts to five. She enters on three.

“Elliot, I can’t do this by myself. I can’t raise the kids by myself,” Kathy says, voice shaking.

“You’re not by yourself. I’m here,” he responds, staring at the bit of toothpaste stuck to the side of the basin.

“You say that and you’re working overtime, you come home at twelve and leave at six every day. When you’re home you sleep.”

“You’re exaggerating.” 

He’s tired of this fucking argument. He’s tired of what she’s going to say next.

“What am I to you, Elliot? What do I mean to you?” she asks and he finally glances at her.

Kathy stands in the doorway, her arms folded over her chest, her hair pulled back in a sloppy bun. Nothing, not even the way her blue eyes peer sadly at him is different. Elliot should move forward and slip his hands around her waist, assure her with his body pressed close.

He looks at her and he sees expectations he’ll never be able to meet. He wonders if he ever met them.

“You only wanted me to come home after you found out you were pregnant.”

The righteous anger drains from her face, leaving confused shock. This isn’t what he’s supposed to say or do.

Elliot turns to face her fully. “What do _I_ mean to _you_?”

He leaves the bathroom, grabs his pillow and the quilt at the foot of the bed, and goes into the nursery for the night.

The next day Elliot pushes too hard during a chase. His calf muscle spasms and he falls, dropping hard to the gravel ground of a car park in south Manhattan. He sucks in air, his eyes stinging. Shit, he hasn’t had a cramp like this in years and it has to happen now, at work, during a foot chase.

Olivia doesn’t slow and it takes Elliot five minutes to stand, another three to rest a quarter of his weight on his weak leg.

Sirens sound in the distance and Elliot turns when he hears his name. Olivia pushes the suspect in front, one hand gripping the collar, the other on the cuffs. She has a busted lip and faint discoloration around her eye.

“What happened?”

Olivia twists the cuffs of the guy they chased four blocks. “Eric got a little slap happy, but it looks like I got the upper hand, huh Eric?” Eric cries out as she increases the pressure.

“Get down on the ground,” she says, shoving him to his knees.

“I called for backup when you went down. You okay?” she asks, eyes shaded by bangs. He has noticed she is more reserved these days, not as inclined to show her feelings. He doesn’t get the sudden turn around, but isn’t completely surprised by it. They got too close.

“I overextended,” Elliot replies and she nods.

“Didn’t jog this morning?’

The sirens approach and flashing lights draw nearer. “Overslept.”

Olivia stares at him for a moment before hauling the guy up and walking him over to the coming cars.

“Right.”

At the precinct, Elliot limps heavily ahead of her, thinking. Her “Right” troubles him. Behind him, Olivia clocks his gait. His limping troubles her.

“Sure you didn’t sprain something?” Olivia asks as they settle at their desks.

He shrugs off his coat. “I’m fine, just some muscle weakness.”

Olivia watches him pull off the skullcap he hasn’t returned and the gloves he’ll probably keep from unclaimed items. She watches Elliot scratch his three-day-old beard and yank at his tie like he’s being throttled by a piece of cloth that symbolizes a professionalism he no longer feels. She watches him check his phone and his brow creases because Kathy has called three times and they’re not really speaking. Elliot stands gingerly and limps to the elevator lobby.

She clicks on a file and reads the first two lines of an autopsy report before her eyes stray back to him. Every time her eyes stray, bile accumulates at the back of her throat and she has to swallow continuously so some _thing_ doesn’t tumble out of her mouth and foul up the air. Olivia thought that she did good, lasting three weeks before shrinking, her legs and arms and words curling up like a dead spider’s legs. She has to give some credit to the bottle of Johnnie Walker she finished at the end of each week. There was no other way to mute the replay function, the ability for her body to feel every nuance of a past action, to hear every bit of glass and every tremulous note of new lungs working, every beep and buzz. Olivia could even picture the expression on her face when he pulled her into him--she’s been seeing it in the mirror after work for about three years now.

Watching Elliot now, limping back and forth, his ear pressed to his cell and his lips barely moving, Olivia feels the thing keeping her smooth, keeping her in line and in place, ripping. The lines blurred when what she thought was safe to feel in the crevices of the night saw the light of day in a overly bright hospital hallway and settled in the space between his neck and shoulder.

Olivia has her eyes back to the report before Elliot flips his phone shut. His leg feels like soggy shit in a bag with each step. Maybe he did sprain something, maybe the damn leg has just given out and doesn’t want to support his fucked up weight anymore. Maybe he should have the dead limb cut off and limp with a cane for the rest of his life, fully give into the half existence he insists on living.

Elliot drops down to his chair and rifles in a desk drawer for Advil. His head and leg and heart are beating to the same rhythm, but it that “Right” that troubles him. Better to drop it and move on, turn his attention to the rape/homicide case he’s certain he’s missing an element of, but his wife calling to tell him that she’s sorry, she’s stressed because of Elliot and having to do this all over again and it’s no excuse to take it out on him because he’s right, he asked to come home and she only agreed when she discovered she was pregnant, the rest Elliot tuned out because he is desperate to fill his mind with things that’s easily forgiven.

He forgets what her “Right” might’ve meant.


	2. Samson

Elliot wakes at a quarter to three, shivering despite the four comforters Kathy pulled from the attic to cover him. She told him it is like sleeping next to a corpse when he asked why.

He pushes off the coverings and stumbles out of bed, going to the closet. Sweats over his pajama pants, loose long-sleeve shirt over thermal, hoodie, and then blind sweep around the bottom until he finds shoes that feel like boots beneath his hands.

He checks on the kids before leaving. Eli coos peacefully, snuggled in baby blankets. Dickie snores softly beneath a quilt. Lizzie is flail away from falling to the floor, so Elliot gently rolls her towards the center and tucks the sheets around her. Kathleen drools on her pillow, hair wild.

It’s when Elliot is a mile from his house that he remembers his wallet. Sure enough he’s wallet-light, but his pockets have enough in tens and fives, probably an accumulation of change from the many late-night jaunts for food and baby supplies.

Elliot finds a taxi and fifteen minutes later, he is in front of a bakery that opens at 4 a.m. and sells out two hours later. He buys four massive croissants and, since he knows the guy who made them, two cups of what’s brewing in the back, hot chocolate with two good splashes of brandy.

He walks quickly, only because the hot chocolate and the croissant shouldn’t be eaten thawed.

People are already out, walking their dogs and cursing the cold. Elliot holds the button down until her voice cracks the early morning air.

“Who is this?”

“Stabler.” 

Olivia sighs, huffing and muttering about it being too damn early to put up with this bullshit, but there’s the buzz letting him in. She waiting at the door, wrapped in a quilt, hair sticking up, face lined with sleep.

“I got work,” Olivia says. Elliott has never heard her voice like this, scratchy and throaty, like warm, dry sheets rubbing together. It wakes him up.

“I know.” It’s all he can say at the moment. Her eyes open another inch and she steps aside. 

Even in the dark, Elliot can tell nothing has changed from the last time. And the last time was such a long time ago. How many times has he been over? Three? But he remembers to avoid the end table and where the coffee table is. He sets the bag and cups on the table. Olivia moves to an armchair, pulling her feet up and running a weary hand through her hair and over her face. She doesn’t bother to put on the lamp and he doesn’t ask her to. It fits that they stay in the dark, unable to clearly see each other’s faces: they can barely see each other in the light. Olivia rustles anxiously, sighing, then sniffing.

“What’d you bring? Coffee?” she asks.

“Hot chocolate. With brandy.”

“In the bag?”

“Croissants. Want one?”

The cushion next to him dips. Elliot takes a croissant for himself and passes the bag. She tucks it between them and takes up a cup.  

“Good shit,” she says.

“I thought it would be a nice change. From flowers and beans.” 

Olivia chuckles, settling against the armrest.

“Flowers and beans. So is this the making of a compromise?”

Elliot shrugs and sits back, unaware that she had stretched out her legs. She starts to draw her feet back but he rests against them.

“Don’t move. It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Olivia murmurs, but her feet remain in place.

They eat in silence. When her toes flex, he relaxes, fully sinking into her couch and into the contact.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why?” Elliot asks after he finishes one croissant.

Olivia pus her toes into his lower back. “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then thanks for the breakfast.”

He turns towards her. He knows her eyes are on him because in the dark they glitter. They capture light like black holes. Elliot stares at her, wondering how Olivia can have an answer to every insignificant thing he might say, but when it comes to him imploding, she doesn’t have one.

“I dreamt that I was there, when the car hit,” Elliot says.

Olivia chews, slurps some of the chocolate. “And?”

“EMS had already gotten Kathy out and she was holding Elliot.”

She reaches in the bag for another croissant. “Everyone is fine Elliot, see? Even when you dream.”

Elliot finds her hand, taking the croissant and dropping it back. “You weren’t fine, Olivia.”

She moves then, withdrawing her feet and picking up the bag so that her soles can touch the ground. “Elliot, it doesn’t matter–”

He cuts her off. “It matters to me. That’s why I’m here, because it matters.” 

She reaches for the lamp, clicking it on. He blinks through the blurring. Olivia is next to him, looking directly into his face, her expression pained.

“I know I matter, Elliot. I know and it’s okay. It’s okay.”

He wants to believe her, but it’s impossible, not when he saw her shattered, exhausted face in the glass, the way her eyes closed at the same time sank into him. He was all jagged edges that day, a complete and total fucking mess, but then he saw her. And now he can’t stop seeing her.

“What happened?”

Olivia opens then shuts her mouth. Quiet wraps around them. Another minute passes before she breaks the stillness.

“I got work in four hours.” She turns off the lamp and goes to the front door, opening it. Too much has happened, and he wants to unpack it all some random morning. Elliot leaves the croissants. The locks sound as he jogs down the steps and out into the cold. 

He’s off today. He’ll walk back to Queens.

* * *

 

The first snow of the year happens when Elliot is coming home from the grocery store with Eli and Lizzie. She started squealing as soon as he pulled into the driveway and before he could discern what the problem was, she was out the car and in the middle of the yard, yanking off her gloves and holding her palms up.

“Your sister’s gone crazy for a few flakes,” he whispers to Eli before taking him out of the car seat and joining his daughter in the middle of the lawn.

“Elizabeth­–” he starts but she turns to him with blue eyes shining with the kind of childlike awe he hasn’t seen from her in awhile.

“Dad, it’s  _ snowing _ . Right before Christmas. You know what this means?”

Eli starts to reach for the swiftly falling flakes, one landing on his little nose. He brushes it off and looks down at his daughter. “Alright, I’ll bite.”

“It means snowmen and snow angels and igloos–Dickie and I always wanted to build one,” she breathes in deeply, smiling.

Snow’s in her hair, on her eyelashes, and she’s smiling at a world that’s being whitewashed, his son grabbing at frozen flecks of water. It hits him then that he’s been a father for twenty years and he’s never had a moment like this: standing in the yard with his kids and it’s snowing, the first for one, a rediscovered phenomenon for another.

Lizzie stands next to him and opens her mouth to catch some snow, laughing when it falls everywhere but her mouth. “I know, I’m acting like a five-year old.”

He holds Eli up so that the back of his little head rests on his shoulder and puts an arm around her neck. “There’s nothing childish about it, Lizzie.”

She nods. “Eli seems pretty good at it.”

The baby is looking up at the sky, mouth open, drooling and silently laughing, little hands still reaching.

“Wanna try?” Elliot asks and Lizzie grins, sticking her tongue out in response.

He follows suit, icy pinpricks numbing his taste buds. He hasn’t done this since middle school, when his father caught him and called him a “dumb little shit.” That was a particularly bad year. But now he’s forgetting, this moment becoming the memory of snow.

“Dad?” Lizzie asks, mouth open.

“Yeah?”

“Can you call me Liz? You’re the only person who still calls me Lizzie.”

Elliot nods.  _ Liz.  _ He experiences the same devastation akin to when Maureen didn’t need him to read “Goodnight Moon” to go to sleep anymore. Kids have a terribly kind way of breaking their parents’ hearts. Especially his kids and his heart.

“Okay, Liz,” he answers, mouth open.

He stands with his daughter and son, groceries in the car temporarily forgotten to eat snowflakes.

* * *

 

Olivia is in the file room, on the floor going over cold cases, perfectly fine with her pastrami on rye when Elliot walks in, holding his namesake.

“Liv." 

She looks up, chewing absently.  "Elli–”

Her eyes don’t meet his; they meet eyes similar to his, eyes untainted by the world, eyes that are bright with curiosity, the most serene shade of blue Olivia has ever seen.

She had made it her business to avoid seeing those eyes in that little face. Elliot was naïve enough to announce when the baby would be coming by so she always had a witness to interview, a building to canvass, an appointment with Novak. But she should have been prepared for the day when he would pull something like this, cornering her in the file room.

Olivia stares up at his son, getting caught up in the rosy, fat cheeks and the slippery little grin. Her eyes slide over to him. She is torn between the compulsion to run and to stay. It’s worth the ambush to know he can still read her better than most.

“Eli, this is Olivia. The last time you met her, you were buck naked,” Elliot says.

Olivia rises awkwardly, realizes she’s still holding her sandwich and a file, and drops both on a box before brushing her palms on the seat of her pants.

“Hello, um, Elliot, Eli,” she says and the baby smiles at her, or maybe he smiles, she doesn’t know if babies can do that at a month. 

“You can hold him,” Elliot tells her and her hands come out, taking the little body from him and cradling him in the crook of her arm.

Olivia looks at the small human in her arms, staring wide-eyed and making spit bubbles and noises while trying to pull out her gold hoop earring. “He’s getting so big.”

“It’s the snowsuit,” Elliot says.

“I think he likes me because I have pretty, shiny things in my ears,” Olivia says, laughing. Just then an overwhelming urge to cry assails her. Three drops of salt water land on a smooth cheek before she quickly places the baby back into Elliot’s arms.

“Olivia?”

She turns and heads down to the end of the row, one hand on her hip, the other over her heart to try and contain herself. There isn’t a clear reason why she’s about to lose her shit, but she’s losing it.

“He’s a beautiful boy, really,” Olivia says, glad her voice came out moderately even. 

The room goes quiet save for the baby and his sounds. Olivia can almost feel Elliot debating whether to push it or let it lie. It is a useless debate. They’re both into self-preservation these days.

When she turns back, Elliot is still there. They’ve been partners so long, all she has to do is look like she’s about to vomit for him to get to the point. 

“Kathy and I wanted to ask you if you could come to Elliot’s christening. We want you to be his godmother.”


	3. Queen of Nowhere

**** “Christmas is a joke. I know, it’s a time to celebrate the birth of Christ, who I may believe in depending on the situation, but otherwise what’s the point? What does shelling out money for a tree signify? How does a pack of 100 twinkling lights or gingerbread houses or peppermint hot chocolate relate to the Virgin Mary giving birth in a barn?”

“The point is to spend time with those you love.”

“And what if a person has no one? Then what?”

“Everyone has someone, Olivia. No one is truly alone.”

She folds her hands over her stomach and leans back into the chair. Huang stares at her from behind his desk, his face the expression of distant care. Olivia sighs. Why does she even bother coming here?

He studies her some more before mimicking her action. “What did you do for Christmas last year?”

Last Christmas. A blur of darkness, takeout, booze, and repeated playing of “When Harry Met Sally”.

“I stayed home.”

“And the Christmas before that?”

“I got drunk and passed out.”

“By yourself?” Huang asks with a grin and she shakes the bangs out of her eyes.

“Might as well have been.”

He makes a steeple out of his fingers and rests his chin on top.  “Elliot never asked you to spend Christmas with him and his family?”

She isn’t expecting this question. Not once in all their meetings has he mentioned Elliot, even though he comes with her, sits on the edge of Huang’s desk and looks at her, eyes eerily patient. Sitting up, Olivia clears her throat, unlocks her fingers to brush an imaginary strand of hair from her face.

“In the beginning, yeah, he asked.”

The first few years Elliot asked and Olivia declined, it was because she never spent Christmas doing the tree, dinner, and snow thing, plus she valued him too much to embarrass him when she had a panic attack in his living room. She imagined Kathy pulling him aside in the kitchen and whispering, “How can I trust a woman who can’t even make it through appetizers to have your back on the streets?”

“Why didn’t you go?” Huang asks, breaking into her thoughts. Olvia takes a few minutes to answer, mainly because she wants it to be true while sounding like a smartass in order to confuse him.

“Because Christmas, like you said, is time to spend with those you love.”

They stare at each other and for once she can anticipate what Huang might say. He’s going to tell her that there are many kinds of love. Camaraderie, duty, passionate love, compassionate love–yes, Olivia knows them all, felt them all. None of them are applicable to Elliot. Whatever she feels is more basic, less understanding, hurts like a relocating a shoulder every five minutes. 

“And you don’t feel loved?”

She laughs, hard and sharp. “You know better than that, George.”

He puts up his hands in a gesture of defeat. “I thought that it might work, but you seem immune to bullshit.”

“You got one thing right.”

“What about Simon?” he asks. The smile vanished from her face as her stomach compacts and folds into a cube.

Simon. Ever since the Milfield debacle, Olivia has avoided contacting him. It scares the shit out of her that she would do anything for someone besides Elliot. This guy, this  _ person _ from out of fucking nowhere is her brother and she meets him a grand total of two times before attaching the label of “sister” to her identity. That she broke laws to find him and to keep him free, that she kicked the shit out of some asshole because of him, that she kept him secret from the person she trusts the most because Simon Marsden is her  _ brother  _ terrifies her. The possibility of what she could do for a stranger who is now her brother. Her brother because their father raped her mother. Their father who destroyed her mother’s life, ripped any semblance of childhood and normalcy from her own life and there she was, running up and down New York and Jersey, risking her career for her mother’s rapist’s offspring. What a clusterfuck.

“What about him?” Olivia finally answers.

“Have you spoken to him since May?”

She rubs the back of her neck, tension that wasn’t there forty seconds ago attacking her muscles.

“He called on Thanksgiving, left a message on my answering machine.”

“Let me guess,” Huang learns forward, “you haven’t returned this call.”

Olivia purses her lips before standing and grabbing her coat. “I think our time’s up.”

“Olivia,” Huang stops her at the door. “You already did everything a sister would do for her brother when his life is in danger. Don’t hold back now when it isn’t.”

Olivia lets out a little laugh. “Good advice. I hope I take it.” She leaves Huang’s office, muttering “Merry Christmas” like a grateful goodbye.

Outside it’s snowing and dark, the sidewalk already covered in a thick layer of white. That doesn’t stop people from walking like they’re being chased and usually this wouldn’t bother Olivia, this kind of dodging and sidestepping, but it’s snowing and she’s not wearing the right kind of shoes for this mess and she would like to walk in a goddamn straight line for once.

She stops in a coffee shop and orders something frothy and laced with caffeine, taking it to a corner by the window. This is the real therapy: dark corner, caffeine, and watching people muddle through the freezing dark. Her mind turns to the last hour, is resolved to break up with her unofficial-official therapist. It’s shit, this sharing business; it’s not give and take with her. No, it’s give all and if she takes a smidgen, everything goes to hell. They didn't even talk about why she came there–the christening.

Olivia winces as time rewinds to the file room, to the exact second after the words “Kathy and I…christening…godmother” were processed and comprehended.

“No.”

The words popped from her mouth without thought. Elliot reshuffled Eli to his other side.  _ Eli _ . Before, the baby had been just that–the baby. Now he had a name, a particular weight and warmth and smell that would collect and form a space in her chest. The same chest that was minutes from bursting.

“No?” Elliot asked. The hard edge that had been missing for some weeks came back.

“I can’t go to the christening. I’m working,” Olivia said.

“You’re working every Sunday from now until you retire?”

She didn’t like facing him head on when his voice dropped low, so she picked up the case file and opened it. But that wasn’t enough, not this time. His eyes singed the top of her head.

“Look,” Olivia glanced up, “whichever Sunday it is, I’m working.”

They were both taken aback, shocked into a new kind of quiet, the quiet of the unknown. 

The man standing in front of Olivia was a different man. She looked at him and saw fragments, pieces barely held together by his increasingly casual style and his beard, his dark beard with threads of gray. She remembered when he wouldn’t be caught dead with a shadow. And now here he was, like this. And she right beside him. Olivia blinked, looked down at her hands clutching the file. Older, dry, with old cuts on top of older ones. They were both broken, halfway to beaten, but for the life her she didn’t know why he was. He had everything he could possibly want and yet he wanted more, from her. She hated him then for being so selfish.

“I don’t want to go to the christening. I don’t want to be his godmother. I don’t want what wouldn’t have been offered if not for the accident.”

Elliot blinked. His face changed. If it wasn’t for his son, he would’ve exploded, and even then it wouldn’t have mattered. She was too tired to bend around it.

“That’s not fair. I don’t even,” he shook his head, “I don’t know where this is coming from.”

He waited for her to talk, but she took up her sandwich and went back to it. Did it hurt when he slammed out of the room? Yeah, like she stepped on glass. 

Olivia feels like shit now, breaking her coffee ban and thinking of Elliot A and Elliot B. God, she’s a bitch. What else is there to be at this point? She refused to be the godmother to a boy she already loves because…why?

This is the unworkable portion of this reasoning. It’s about Elliot, as most things in her life are about. Hell, most? How about all? How about nights are devoted to worrying needlessly over him and days are spent carefully avoiding any of the pools of sentiment between them? There’s no good reason, only excuses. She seems to run on them.

Olivia finishes her coffee and leaves, warm enough to trek back to the precinct for some late night work. Maybe she can play detective and figure out when and why she acquired the inability to swallow her pride like she has the fourteen hundred other times when it comes to Elliot Stabler.


	4. Walking on Glass

Elliot tells Kathy that Olivia won’t be in town for the christening.

“She won’t? Well,” Kathy folds a towel and hands it to him to put away, “she agreed to being his godmother, right?”

The thought of flat out lying to her face makes him ill, so Elliot does it from the linen closet. “Yeah, she agreed.”

Kathy says something that sounds vaguely happy, but he doesn’t care about her response. He only cares that he’d rather have salt poured in his eye than beg her to be Eli’s godmother. He thought Kathy was insane to ask in the first place, but he said what the hell and tried. She made it clear she wanted nothing to do with his personal life, with the life of his kids.

At work Elliot doesn’t talk. When Olivia says something, expecting a response, he nods or shrugs his agreement. When she asks a question, he nods or shrugs or, if he’s feeling particularly generous, he grunts.

It’s grating on her, this silent partnership, and Elliot relishes it. The awkward car rides, the dry talk, business only. She doesn’t understand it, not fully, but it translates frequently into anger. Elliot watches her, her throat moving as though swallowing cotton. Yeah, that’s what it feels like whenever they have to be civil instead of cutting through the bullshit.

Elliot spends the week between Christmas and New Years’ deliberately forgetting to give Olivia the gift. Kathy doesn’t have to remind him–every morning before he goes to work and every night when he comes home Elliot has to pass the tree and see the lone box on the corner of the red velvet tree skirt.

He work early on New Year’s Eve, intent on celebrating with the family for the first time in God knows how long. Opening the door, he is struck by the darkness save for the twinkling tree lights.

“Kathy? Dickie? Lizzie?” Elliot calls, setting his keys on the kitchen table and going to the fridge. There’s a covered plate of rib eye and mashed potatoes with a post-it note stuck on the plastic wrap.

_ Happy New Year, Baby (and Daddy). _

Elliot closes the fridge door and takes out his cell. No new messages. Kathy would’ve called if they were going out.

His body is in the beginning stages of panic when he starts upstairs, going from room to room, finding them all empty, all dark. When he comes to the master bedroom, the door is partially open, ghostly light from the television shining through the crack. He pauses, listening, barely breathing. He can hear Dick Clark broadcasting, the crackle of wrappers, the creaking of bedsprings, soft laughter, murmured speech.

He edges the door open and there is Kathy in the middle of the bed, holding Elliot, Kathleen and Dickie on either side, Lizzie at the foot of the bed. There are bags of candy and food littering the bed and bottles of sparkling apple cider on the floor. They are currently playing “This Little Piggy” with a very awake, very vocal Eli. Dickie and Lizzie, Liz he reminds himself, are arguing over which little piggy does what.

Elliot watches for a couple more seconds before softly retreating, except he doesn’t stop at the stairs. It’s only when he’s at the end of the driveway that he doubles back to retrieve the only thing left under the lights.

* * *

 

At ten minutes to midnight Olivia goes up to the roof with a cup of hot chocolate, a handful of truffles swiped from Major Case, a lighter and a sparkler. Fuck fire codes. She’s in the mood for sparks.

From up here, if she squints just right, she can make out the cluster of lights that is the ball. This is the closest to Times Square and Dick Clark Olivia will ever get and she is content with that. It’s better than being halfway to drunk on the arm of some handsome asshole. 

Olivia sets up her spot on the ledge, letting her feet dangle over the edge. Heights scare the shit out of her, but she’s been up high for so long that the possibility of falling seems far off and marginally ridiculous. She lifts her face and leans into the cold brushing her cheeks and forehead, biting at the skin. For the first time all year, Olivia feels settled, light, unafraid to be cold and to be alone.

The door creaks open behind her. Olivia glances back, expecting Munch or Fin or, as her luck would have it, Lake, coming up to steal her chocolates and ring in the New Year with a call.

Her fingers dig into the brick as Elliot steps out onto the gravel, eyes on her.

“Munch told me you were up here.”

Olivia says nothing. He stops next to her and and sets down a brightly wrapped box on the ledge. 

She glances at the box, then at him. “I thought you went home.”

Elliot sighs, squints, first at her, then at the skyline. He heaves himself on the edge, using the gift as a divider between them. 

“Aren’t you typically out with some handsome uptown guy, drinking asti, dancing to weird soft rock music this time of year?”

Olivia gives him a look and he just laughs and stretches out his feet. She looks at him, at the city lights reflected in his black shoes. He is in a suit, one of the modern ones he received for Christmas from Maureen and Kathleen in an attempt to contemporize him. He looked good. Sharp, fitted. She was used to the sloppy ties and the two-for-one 2X dress shirts from the discount barn. Olivia added this to a list of changes she is still unsure about, like the beard.

When his eyes swing to hers, Olivia asks him why he’s not at home. 

“They didn’t need me to be there,” Elliot answers, aware that it sounds so fucking whiny, but it’s the truth. They didn’t need him. Watching them, he realized they had a tradition that didn’t include him and they were content with that, it made it work better. He wasn’t needed. It was okay. 

“The box is addressed to me,” she says after a minute and he nods.

“Kathy and the kids got it for you.”

“I didn’t get them anything.”

“No one expected you to,” he says. 

Olivia can’t take seeing him acting this way, acting nice and comfortable, almost friendly, after nearly a month of silent bitchiness. She hates the warmth flooding her chest, the way her shoulders dropped as though she’s finally set down some burden. 

She turns her attention to the skyline. “I don’t want it.”

“You do. You think you’re going to lose if you admit it. But you lost the moment you didn’t dropkick me of the roof.” 

Olivia can’t help the grin from twisting her mouth. “Well. I couldn’t deprive your kids the continued pleasure of having such an irritatingly stubborn father.” 

She unwraps the box, lifts off the white lid, parts the white tissue paper, and swallows a gasp.

Sitting on a bed of shredded paper is a small silver music box with a scene of a forest at night inlaid behind a gold filigree top. She lifts off the top carefully. Different aspects of the forest are layered over each other. It’s gorgeous, the craftsmanship intricate. On the side of the box is a tiny silver lever. She cranks it and the beginning harps of the  _ Grand pas de deux  _ from The Nutcracker begins. She watches in fascination as the starry sky with a round moon folds like a curtain opening to reveal a sun-drenched Garden of Eden. It is magnificent.

Elliot leans over to look at her looking at the box. They catch eyes and Olivia knows that it’s bullshit, that Kathy and the kids picked this out.

She looks down at the silver and gold shining in her hand. “It’s playing my favorite song from The Nutcracker. No one knows about that.”

“I saw the box, heard the song, thought of you,” Elliot says without a trace of awkwardness, as if it was fine to say this after two weeks of shitty behavior.

“What is wrong with you?”

Elliot sighs. “I don’t know. All I know is that I want to start the year making shit right, with you.”

Olivia checks her watch. A minute to midnight. She has a decision to make. This is a truce, a new start, a new try at being friends and better partners because that’s all they can strive to be at this point, better without being all they can be to each other. She stares into his clear silver blue eyes.

“All I got are truffles, hot chocolate, and a sparkler,” Olivia offers.

“It’s enough.” 

Olivia lights the sparkler and they eat a truffle and share the hot chocolate as another year begins.

**Author's Note:**

> Going through old backup discs and discovered my old SVU fanfic 'Deconstruction', previously uploaded on the old SVUfiction site. I remember how much I liked this one, and reading it again, I am reminded of the community that supported its development and fed its many ideas. I miss that old site, but I'm glad I had the foresight to preserve a bit of it before the crash. Hope you enjoy!


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